


i'm in love with a strict machine

by thefudge



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Bran has a plan and it's kind of evil, Dark Bran, Dubious Consent, Evil Bran, F/M, Mind Manipulation, Mindfuck, Orgasm Control, Sibling Incest, ost: goldfrapp - strict machine, ost: sharon van etten - the end of the world
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-05-28
Updated: 2019-07-23
Packaged: 2020-03-20 14:54:04
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 6,569
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18994864
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thefudge/pseuds/thefudge
Summary: Post 8x06. The nights should be peaceful now, but they rarely are. Bran/Sansa (Dark)





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * Translation into Русский available: [i'm in love with a strict machine](https://archiveofourown.org/works/19064050) by [larasorna](https://archiveofourown.org/users/larasorna/pseuds/larasorna)



> am i planning on making this my most fucked up fic yet? you bet!
> 
> (aka this is how i cope with shit show)

 

 

 

I get high on a buzz  
Then a rush when I'm plugged in you  
I connect when I'm flush  
You get love when told what to do  
  
Wonderful electric

  
Wonderful electric

  
Wonderful electric

  
Cover me in you  
  
I'm in love, I'm in love  
I'm in love with a strict machine  
I'm in love, I'm in love  
I'm in love with a strict machine

           - _strict machine_ , goldfrapp  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The nights should be peaceful now, but they rarely are.

Fragments of the same agonizing dream disturb her sleep.

She is running through the godswood, running  _from_ something. She’s looking for a way out, but the path seems to stretch on forever. Snow weighs down the branches.  They scrape the ground like fingernails behind her. The soft flapping of wings makes her look up. She is startled by the dark belly of a dozen ravens, swooping down on her. Their talons slice the air at her back. Their squawks curdle the blood in her veins. She must be running from  _them_. Their attack is a mystery she does not have time to unravel. She knows with a dread certainty that if they catch her they will tear her to shreds.

As she runs the dread becomes a hot spring, boiling under the skin. Her tightly-knit corset feels like a dungeon, like being buried alive. Always towards the end of the dream she clutches at her dress and wants to rip it off before the ravens get a chance to do it. She runs in terror, wishing she could disrobe, wishing she were naked. It’s an eerie kind of horror.

Old Nan used to tell her stories of young maidens who threw golden combs and ruby rings behind them and mountains and lakes would grow in their place to stop the evil spirits chasing them. One girl cast off her gown and the garment turned into a shield. Why did she never ask Nan about that one? Why wasn’t she curious?

She pulls at the chain of her dress until it cuts her finger. There is a tear at the back of her corset. The flapping is louder, closer, the ravens are about to sink their talons and -

Sansa wakes up in a pool of cold sweat. She is naked. She has torn off her nightgown and smallclothes. She lies in the middle of the bed, cradling her shivering body.

 

 

 

The food turns her stomach. She only pecks crumbs from her plate, a wane little bird.  She fingers the goblet in her lap. She’s taken to drinking more wine. Somewhere in the back of her mind there’s a joke about turning into Cersei, but she’s not laughing. The small lords in the Great Hall express their concern. Is she all right? Did the head of capon displease her? Could they fetch her something else?

Sansa smiles gracefully. As their queen she mustn’t show weakness. Northerners are capricious people, no matter how ready to pledge their troth to a Stark. She remembers when almost every house in the North turned a deaf ear to her call to take Winterfell back from the Boltons. She does not want to overestimate or underestimate them ever again.

She excuses herself, claiming fatigue.

She’d like to pray, but she can’t abide the godswood now.

She has not been inside the Sept since she was a child. It was restored for the Vale men during their stay at Winterfell. The Queen in the North should not need the Seven. It betrays some lingering foreign influence. She goes in anyway.

Sansa walks up to each statue, contemplating the soft features etched in stone. She would never say it out loud to anyone breathing, but she still feels nothing about the Old Gods. Nothing tethers her to the gaping red mouth of the weirwood. It’s too absolute, too demanding. There’s no room for doubt, for duplicity. Whereas this quiet room filled with so many different faces reassures her. People have many faces too.   

She stops by the figure of the Mother. She is holding a small bundle in her arms, head bent lovingly over her babe. Sansa reaches out with her fingers and touches the Mother’s cold hands. She used to spend hours reading prayers and songs about the Mother. Catelyn used to tell her not to neglect the Maiden, who ensured safe passage in the world to burgeoning young women, but Sansa did not heed her words. She liked the mystery of motherhood too much to care about the dangers of the outside world. The true adventure was  _within_. Old Nan had warned her about the bed of blood and the endless screams, but it had not scared her. How did the woman make another person from scratch? And why couldn’t men do it? That’s what made her curious.

Sansa drops her hand. She wishes she’d listened to Catelyn.

She murmurs a prayer of mercy to the Mother.

_Quiet my thoughts, give me strength, teach me a kinder way..._

The words fall by the wayside. The row of candles at the Mother’s feet quiver violently and gutter. Sansa inhales the acrid smoke.

She looks around her. The other candles are snuffed. All but the row in front of the statue of the Stranger.

Sansa doesn’t let this unnerve her. She swallows the sweet knot in her throat.

She’s never liked the Stranger. Few people do. You’re not supposed to like him. He, or rather  _it_ , is eternally unknowable, the face of death. The opposite of the Mother’s life, in that regard. The Stranger has his uses, but she can’t recall ever praying to him.

She walks slowly towards his statue. The figure’s head is veiled. He is holding a polished skull between his shapely hands. Prettier than the Mother’s, uglier than the Crone’s.

Sansa stares at the skull’s empty sockets.

Is it Death that troubles her, that reminds her every night she’s still running? Does she feel unsafe, even in the heart of Winterfell? It’s dangerous to believe in invisible enemies. The Targaryens went the same way.

_What do you want from me?_

_Tell me._

The Stranger does not answer. He never does. That’s rather the point. His silence is the answer.

But the skull is a different manner.  It’s not static. Darkness seems to pour out of the empty sockets, a sticky,  _noisy_ substance. Melted whispers, furtive hissing.   

She draws nearer, bends down until her face is level with the skull.

There are delicate interstices, like capillaries, along the skull’s pate.

Her fingers ghost over them.

She feels a pleasant coolness, like skimmed milk on a summer’s day.

The skull’s hollowed eyes are like mouths.

She could stick her fingers there and they’d curl into cold air.

She leans closer.

She doesn’t mean to, she just can’t help it.

Her lips press, unbidden, to the skull. It feels soft, like human flesh. Thrumming with life.

Sansa pulls away with a cry.

She wipes her mouth.

She stumbles out of the Sept, crosses the courtyard, but she doesn’t get very far before she retches bile on the snow.

 

 

 

 

Rumors are she’s with child.

It would explain the mood swings, the fatigue, the lack of appetite, the frequent heaving.

Sansa forces her chambermaid to tell her what else the smallfolk are saying.

“They’re - they’re wondering who the father might be, your Grace. And if you’ll marry him and make him king.”

Sansa laughs to herself when she is left alone.

She almost wishes the rumors were true. Fathering a bastard would be a less terrifying prospect.

Such talk will die down when her stomach doesn’t swell, she tells herself.

_But maybe I’m ill. Maybe I am dying._

No.

She has survived tyrants. She’s survived the undead. She will not die of mere fright.

But are the undead truly gone? Could this be a message from beyond the Wall?

She feverishly starts drafting a letter to Jon.

Halfway through, she shakes her head, crumples the parchment, and throws it into the fire.  

He would not laugh at her fancies, he might even believe her. But he would worry pointlessly. Jon is very good at that.

Sansa forces herself to return to work. She goes over the new land settlements for the castles along the Wall. She marks down a few changes, watches the ink stains converge on the page, the dark craters pooling between words.

She falls asleep in her seat, feather quill between her fingers.

Feathers taste oily on her tongue. There’s a raven in her mouth.

She screams.  

 

 

 

 

Nightmares walk with her everywhere she goes.

The godswood isn’t safe, the Sept isn’t safe, her chamber isn’t safe, the solar isn’t safe, the Great Hall isn’t safe.

Winterfell isn’t safe.

At times like these, she misses her direwolf.

Or rather, she misses missing her.

Her maid’s words doggedly rise to the surface.

_They’re wondering who the father might be...and if you’ll marry him and make him king._

It doesn’t make sense.

There’s no father.

 _Aye_ , Old Nan’s voice whispers from the grave,  _but there is a king._

Sansa puts down the goblet of wine.

She wipes her mouth.

There is a king.

 

 

 

 

She doesn’t know why he wasn’t her first thought. Why she stumbled in the dark for more than a month. As if her mind were fogged.

_Oh._

“Your Grace?”

The maester waits calmly for her next words.  

Sansa stares at the feather quill in his hand.  She fiddles with her chain.

Bran would know why these unnatural visions keep plaguing her. He knows everything.

But that’s the problem, isn’t it?

What did Littlefinger use to tell her? Fight every battle in your mind.

So what if the fog and the skull and the ravens - the  _ravens_ -

What if Bran - the  _King_ \- what if he -

“Your Grace?”

Sansa smiles.

“Tell my brother I miss him and I need his counsel.”

 

 

 

 

King’s Landing is hushed and quiet.

That’s neither here nor there after more than two quarters of the city was ravaged.

Still, there is something unsettling about the thick blanket of silence. Even the workmen’s hammers do not disturb it. The repairs are ghostly. The citizens shuffle wearily, cobwebs wrapped around their feet.

The carriage wheels skate across the cobblestone soundlessly.

She would’ve preferred to ride her horse to the Red Keep, but she still feels weak.

Sansa hums to herself, just to hear something. The smell of roast, of dark incineration, still permeates the air.

She raises a handkerchief to her nose.

Something strikes her as the carriage starts riding uphill and passes the ruins of the Sept.

She is alone.

No, that’s not true. She has brought her retinue with her. And she will soon reunite with Brienne and Gilly. She has missed them both.

And yet, she can’t help but feel that she is alone, that she has come here unguarded, undefended, naked -

The ravens flap their wings in her mind.

She clutches her chain.

When she sees him, he will reassure her. The King will put her mind at rest.

_Or not._

 

 

 

 

“Sister.”

He’s not much changed. Perhaps a little taller, but that’s possibly only a trick of the light.

Since warmth returned to the capital, he’s relinquished the furs. He is wearing a simply tailored tunic, elegant and regal. It almost leaves her feeling jealous. She knows she cuts an imposing figure, but sometimes she still feels like a fraud.

Bran the Broken does not sit where the Throne once stood, but rather to the side, half in shadow.

He rolls towards her smoothly and she feels a sudden urge to bend the knee.

Sansa checks herself. She is not his subject, after all.

His gaze, abstruse yet perfectly open, seems to glide over her.

Ever since her brother became the Three-Eyed Raven that gaze has never stopped gliding. It’s as if she were in motion, as if she were swimming down river and his eyes keep watch of her lest she go over the waterfall.  

“Come,” he invites, lifting a beringed hand. The motion is fluid, the fingers shapely.

She approaches with a sense of deja vu.

Sansa smiles bracingly, stops before his chair, and bends down to kiss his forehead, as she’s wont to do.

The air in her lungs has been polluted with the charred ruins of King’s Landing, because she finds it hard to breathe.

His skin feels familiar in an unfamiliar way.

She steps back. For an instant - just an instant - his eyes are two empty sockets.

Sansa opens her mouth.

His eyes are brown and lackluster and reassuring.

She exhales. “You look well. Kingship suits you.”

“Does it,” he says flatly, not like a question. His eyes glide over her again, as if she were a luminous Tully fish.  “You carry it better.”

Sansa straightens her shoulders self-consciously.

“I see you’ve made progress on rebuilding.”

Bran’s lip curls. “I’ve learned a lot from Bran the Builder.”

It takes her a moment to realize what he means. Sansa tries to contemplate reaching that far back in time and almost loses her nerve.

It’s Bran who speaks again. “Something disquiets you. Your letter did not say much.”

Sansa smiles wryly. “I’m sure you already know more than I can say.”

“I’d like to hear you say it, just the same,” he says coolly. The words are delivered in the same silk-spun monotone, and yet there is something curious about his request. She feels an inkling of curiosity. He rolls his chair away with the indication that she should follow him.

 

 

 

 

The pink of the marble turns into orange red as the sun sets.

The terrace overlooks the harbor and the stunted heads of olive trees, covered in cinder.

The sea is calm and grey even in the splendor of the sun.

Sansa remembers dining with the mother of the King in these sumptuous rooms. Cersei had tried to make her say the wrong thing. It had been an awful game, but she almost misses it now.

Bran stands on the edge of the terrace, hands folded in his lap.

“Have you ever considered that you have the sight too, that all of you do?” he says quaintly.

Sansa licks her lips. “The sight.”

“Warging, among other things.”

“You mean Arya and Jon -?”

“And you, yes. Not to the extent I have it, but it’s there. All the Starks have gotten something from the Children." 

Sansa paces to the edge of the terrace. “I...I never thought about it like that. It did not seem likely. It still doesn’t.”

“It would have manifested earlier had your direwolf not been killed.”

The memory of Lady stings, but she does not let it show. She laughs instead, a trick laugh, a kind of retort, something she learned from Cersei.

“You expect me to believe these are my...my latent powers manifesting.”

Bran cocks his head just an inch. There’s always been something arrogant about his transformation, but now as King he is even more exalted.

And yet...a crown makes him more human too.

He reminds her of a man with too good an opinion of himself.

“I think you know what is happening to you,” he answers.  

The sea breeze smells of smoked meat. She watches a lock of hair dance in the current. They have won, but everything reminds her of carnage.  “I have my suspicions.”

“What are they?”

Sansa locks eyes with him. “You are doing this to me.”

For the first time since her arrival, her brother graces her with a full smile.

“Good.”

Sansa parts her lips. There is sweat on her upper lip.  “You -  _Good_? How can you - how can you sit there and -”

“It isgood that you’re aware of it. I am testing your mind for a pathway. A channel." 

“Testing my - you have been torturing me -!”

Bran shakes his head softly. “No, that is not real torture.”

Sansa feels her hackles rising. “How dare you. You have  _no_ right to invade my mind.”

“I am only opening it. Nothing more, nothing less. As I said, you have no direwolf to guide you.”

“I don’t need your guidance!”

She can hear it. She no longer sounds like the Queen in the North. She sounds frightened and young. It only angers her more.

“I thought I was ill or going mad. I am not your pet experiment. I am your own blood, your sister!”

“Yes. Precisely. Who else am I going to do it to?”

His logic is impeccable.  

Sansa feels nauseous. She can’t believe him. And yet, she certainly can.

Her anger makes her want to hurt him. She marches towards his chair.

“The next time you do this, expect an army at your gates.”

Bran looks up at her. “How quickly you turn on your blood.”

Sansa ignores him. “I’ll write to Jon and Arya too.”  

Bran gives her another elusive smile. “You cannot reach them now. You are alone, I’m afraid.”

_Alone. Alone._

The feeling that kept weighing her down as she climbed the hill.

Sansa grips the side of his chair, looms over him.

“You shouldn’t threaten me or you won’t be king for very long.”

Bran stops smiling. He is not discomfited, merely displeased.

“That is no way to show gratitude.”

Before Sansa understands what is happening, he is inside her. She feels his intrusion like the blade of a knife. Swift and excising. Leaving nothing for her.

His eyes are bone.

She kneels in front of his chair, but it’s not her kneeling. She feels his puppet hand caressing her spine.

Somehow he is behind her, whispering in her ear, while also within her.

_Catelyn taught you pretty words, useful words. What do you say to the Three-Eyed Raven for opening your mind?_

One hand on the cartilage of her spine, ticklish. Another hand wrapped around her vocal cords, blistering.

She can still breathe, but it’s getting difficult. His grip is almost easy, almost teasing.  

Sansa steadies herself against his absent knees. The boy in the chair is not there.

He is inside her.

She struggles with his words in her mouth, swallows them down.

“Thank you,” she finally expels.

A few moments later, his pupils are brown and she is panting, head fallen in his lap.

Bran caresses her hair, pulls loose, wet strands from her face.

His thumb wipes a tear from her eye.

Sansa trembles, unable to wrench her head away. She almost chokes on a sob.

His voice is the soul of self-possession. 

“Hush now. It will get better, I promise.”

 

 

 

 

Gilly presses the cold compress to her forehead.

The drapes have been drawn. She has been unburdened of her dress.

Sansa wants to tell the girl everything, but something stays her tongue. Something heavy.

Caution.

“His Grace said you fainted. You haven’t been eating well, I see.”

Sansa smiles weakly. “Could you fetch me something from the kitchens?”

Gilly is only too happy to oblige.

When Sansa is left alone she buries her head in the pillow and screams.

Once that is done, she lies on her back and stares at the ceiling.

She has to think. She has to think  _fast_.

Who at court can she confide in? Who would not be endangered by her knowledge?

And what did he mean when he said that Arya and Jon are far away now? Did he - was he implying perhaps that - ?

No, that would require too much forethought. To pull the strings and manipulate events in such a way as to get...here.

_The lone wolf dies, but the pack survives._

_You cannot reach them now. You are alone, I’m afraid._

She stands up in bed.

The Starks have been scattered to the four winds, the capital has been reduced to ashes, and he is now the sole arbiter of power.

She feels dizzy, yet lucid. In fact, she’s never felt more alive. She must summon Tyrion, she must meet with him in secret. He might put the pieces together with her.

She has to set everything down on paper too, just in case -

The croak sounds like a laugh and it congeals her blood.

Sansa presses a hand to her mouth.

She is afraid to look, but she must.

She casts her eyes over her shoulder. 

There is a raven perched on her bedpost, head tilted in inquiry.

Its eyes are milky white.

The bird is eyeing her with hunger.

Sansa puts one foot down on the floor.

The raven croaks a warning.

If she goes any further, it will descend upon her. 

She retreats. She obeys, for now.

She lies back down. Head on the pillow.

Above her, the raven watches, wings unfurled.

Sansa feels the hot spring boiling under her skin.  

She wants to tear off her clothes and the sheets and the pillows and watch the feathers float. 

She closes her eyes, knowing she won't sleep.

The dream takes her even before Gilly opens the door. 

 

 

 

 

She is running through the godswood.   

The flapping of wings follows her into the labyrinth of snow. 

She hates the feeling of dead leaves underfoot.

The smell of a charnel house.

She stumbles and falls. 

The birds' bellies are already fat with her. She can hear them preparing to feast.  

She cowers on the ground. 

She spies a pair of boots by her head.

She looks up.

Her brother is standing above her, hands behind his back.

He takes a step forward, then another. He is walking.

Bran walks around her.  His heels stir the snow, make flecks land on her cheek. 

Sansa tries to crawl away.

He raises his foot and presses the boot against her spine. He knows exactly where to apply pressure, has learned the anatomy of decline. 

"You may not walk, but you will fly."

His voice pins her down harder.

Her fingers scrape snow until they bleed. She doesn't understand.

 _I can't fly,_  she thinks.

 _Little bird, that's what they called you_ , he says, flatly, without encouragement, without feeling. Merely stating fact. 

_Of course you can fly._

 

 

 

 

The Council is concerned. Sansa Stark arrived only yesterday and she has already fallen ill.

Sam blames the foul air of the capital and the stress of the journey.

Brienne thinks her Lady has probably exhausted herself. 

Tyrion wonders if this might be a different kind of mental strain. Queenship does not come easy, even to the chosen. 

Bran the Broken tells them his sister will stay in King's Landing until she recuperates.

"We will all look after her," he says softly, staring wistfully in the distance. "And I will make sure her mind is at peace." 

No one argues with the King. 


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hooo boy, trigger warnings and such. (but not that many? how many is too many??)

A sound she never thought she would dread is the gentle creak of wooden spokes. He doesn’t always let her hear him, though. Sometimes she doesn’t hear him at all. 

Sansa sits up in bed as his chair rolls to her side. 

She places her palms over the covers and stares at her bitten-down nails. They look blue in the cool morning light. She’s lost track of the days. That used to happen when she was under Joffrey’s care. But then she had Shae. 

True, she is not getting beaten. There are no bruises on her body, none that the eye can see. 

But she would rather kiss the fists of horrid Ser Blount than let her brother caress her mind. 

Bran leans back in his chair, a small smile on his lips. 

“I hear you ate a little more today. That is good. You are recovering.” 

Sansa lowers her head in a show of convalescence. She speaks in the sweet, hesitant idiom she thought she’d long abandoned. Some things must be relearned. 

“I’m well, your Grace. Well enough to go home, by your leave. You have taken good care of me.” 

Bran murmurs something under his breath, but his lips do not move. Yet she hears him talking to someone, or something. 

She twines her fingers, waiting, dreading. 

Bran pats his lap. 

“Let’s see you, then.” 

Sansa knows what this means. It’s what he demands of her every time she claims she is ready to go back North.

She removes the covers and crawls towards him. She lowers herself against the sheets and stretches over the edge, placing her head gently in his lap. 

Her heart beats a wild tattoo she cannot bridle. She tries to clear her mind, to empty it of thought. She’s been getting better at it, she thinks. 

His fingers are cold as they turn her profile towards him. Some of her loose hair spills down his insensate legs. She wonders, does he ever feel the urge to remove the useless things? Or is he content to walk in dreams? 

She looks up at her brother and sees her blue eyes reflected in his dark iris. The Stranger.

She shouldn’t have thought about his legs. Sansa winces at her own lack of restraint. She used to be good at this. But her brother has a way of discomfiting her, of undressing niceties and poise. He is beyond politics. 

Bran traces his finger down her cheek. 

“Open your mouth for me.” 

His lilting cadence is soothing. You want to trust him. You can’t.

She opens her mouth. Her pink tongue trembles. 

“A little wider.”

She obliges. 

Bran stares into the dark opening, the ripe pink, the raw back of her throat. Flowers could bloom there, but maggots could too. 

He holds her jaw. 

She waits for the verdict. He will say she needs more rest. But will he let her at least walk the gardens? She tries not to ask herself these things, but it’s useless. 

Bran watches the conflict in her eyes. 

“You are weak,  Sansa.”

She releases a breath against his palm. 

“We all are. We crawl naked into the light,” he continues, pressing his thumb against her lower lip, “from our mother’s dark mouth. That is our first weakness. We must come out of something. We are not self-fashioned. It’s a lesson in humility.”

Sansa blinks. Moisture is gathering in her throat. She wants to swallow, but his fingernail taps against her lower teeth. 

“Someday, someone will crawl out of you too, sister.” 

Sansa stiffens. He’s never talked about this before. She can’t help seeing it, an inchoate ugly thing, bulging and suppurating, coming out of her throat, breaking her jaw. She remembers the taste of raven feathers. She shudders. Birth terrifies her more than death, more than any violence. 

Bran reaches with his other hand and parts a few strands from her temples. 

“Don’t be afraid. I won’t let it harm you. Clear your mind like I taught you. Let your body become even weaker. _Flee_ your body, if you must.” 

 _Do not resist_ , is the true meaning.  But all her life she resisted, even when she bowed down to her jailors. 

She does not want to be like him. To be like him is to be nothing. 

Sansa closes her eyes. Her open mouth aches. 

His fingers rest on the median of her throat. 

She knows what comes next.

The medicine. 

He takes out a small phial filled with a viscous amber tincture in which she sees decomposing larvae and hairy roots and broken twigs. 

First he dabs some of it on his fingers and lets the oil run down to his knuckles. Then he gently swabs her lips, making them glisten. Then he urges his coated fingers inside her mouth. Slowly, by degrees. The first time he did it, she thought she would heave with nausea, but the medicine smells like grass after rain and tastes bittersweet, like camphor. Rather she is tempted to lick it. But she mustn’t do that. Sansa must not wrap her lips around his fingers. She must keep her mouth wide open and wait for him to paint the insides of her mouth. She must not move her tongue against his forefinger as he curls it into her folds. She is ashamed of how much she wants to suck on that forefinger. He told her once, in the beginning, that he is feeding her the root of the oldest weirwood tree, but she does not think it can be true. 

The medicine numbs the lower half of her face, until she can barely speak or swallow. 

He removes his hand from her mouth and gently closes her jaw. 

Then he brings his forefinger to his lips and quickly and dispassionately licks it dry. He screws back the top of the phial and wipes his finger against her bedsheets. 

He returns his gaze to her. 

“How are you feeling?” 

Sansa only nods, dribble running down her chin. 

Her eyes are blue and white, brighter than the cinder light filtering through the sun screen. 

Bran caresses the top of her hair. 

He calls for her handmaiden. Perhaps it is time to wash her beautiful red locks. 

  
  


 

 

As she is submerged in the marble pool, she feels nothing but ease. Her thin shift is swollen, like a pregnant belly. Sansa raises her arms feebly. She wants to take it off.

Bran lifts his chin.

“Help Lady Sansa, will you?”

The handmaiden reaches forward and takes off her shift.

Sansa falls back into the water with a lazy splash. 

Steam rises from the hot stones sizzling in the bowls around the pool. It does little to shield her tattered modesty.

Sansa leans her head back against the marble and looks up at her brother. Her cheeks are unnaturally flush. She raises one arm over her breasts, and then lowers it, not knowing exactly what to do. 

“Do you remember the hot springs under Winterfell?” he asks. The skin of his forehead, she remarks, is white and chilled and dry. 

“I - I do.”

“There were three pools beneath the windows of the Guest House which were fed directly by the hot springs,” he speaks coolly. “We could bathe in them, but Mother wouldn’t let us. They were too hot. They'd flay our skin. Do you remember?”

Sansa issues a small, senseless laugh. She remembers the boiling film of the glimmering pool and how it burned her toes when she dipped them in. 

“Yes,” he nods. “So hot that once, we saw a songbird boiling to death in one of the pools. Hodor wanted to have it cooked for supper.” 

Sansa frowns. She doesn’t remember the bird. 

“You weren’t there to see, but you can be,” Bran tells her, and before she knows it, the steam has grown thick like stone walls and she feels very small, shrinking in her body.

The weirwood roots she was fed jut out like fingers from her spine and spread out, a pair of mangled wings across her back.

She feels them grow and grow until they tear flesh and bone.

She tries to get out of the pool and slips and falls back in. She keeps flapping her wings hopelessly, churning water.

Sansa stares at the iridescent plumage of her wings, the sudden downy whiteness that has sheathed her nakedness. She gasps in delight and horror. There’s a stunted chirp in her throat. 

Above her, giant trees scatter a flurry of acorns. The sky is young and enervated. 

A gentle giant prods the boiling water with a stick and smiles a toothy, lamb-like smile.

Next to him, a young boy stares with wide eyes, long auburn hair falling down to his shoulders. 

“Fly. Fly away. Why doesn’t it fly away, Hodor?” little Bran asks.

Sansa tries.

She lifts her wings to the sky.

Fly away.

It’s so easy. 

It ought to be.

“Why doesn’t she just fly away?” little Bran asks again. 

It’s easier, Sansa thinks, to let the waters warm you to death. 

  
  


 

 

(somewhere in the space between worlds, she feels Hodor’s teeth sink into her flesh. He’s eating her with relish) 

  
  


 

 

She breaks the water’s surface with a scream, arms flailing. 

For a moment, she doesn’t know how a body should behave.  It felt so tangible, so intrinsically real, the cartilage of a bird. 

She falls against the marble slats, scrapes them with her nails. 

Bran has to gently and then more forcefully coax her back into submission. 

She feels heavy again, heavy and big, swollen, thick ropes of hair weighing her down. She wipes her face.

Bran rolls closer to the edge of the pool. 

“You are getting better. You will fly, soon enough.” 

Sansa feels it then, the lick of him at the back of her head. 

She grows cold, even with the steam curling like shackles around her wrists. 

“Don’t.” 

Bran taps one finger against his knee. “What was it you said? You’d rather kiss Ser Blount’s fists than have me inside you.” 

“I didn’t s-say it. I didn’t say that.”

“You did not need to. You are very loud, Sansa. Your thoughts echo when they should whisper and then fade into nothingness.”

Sansa clenches her jaw. 

“Do _your_ thoughts whisper and fade into nothingness?” 

Her brother smiles. 

“You are thinking you should hear me as I hear you. Good. Perhaps one day you will.”

Sansa wipes water from her mouth. “I don’t want to hear you.” 

“You would rather take a beating from Joffrey’s Kingsguard?” 

She can hear it in the distance; the ripping of her corset. The sound will always haunt her. Ser Blount tearing the pretty satin in half with his bare hands, exposing her back.

Yet now when she looks back on the memory, she finds that her back is not smooth and unspoiled.

The bones look mangled. The shoulder blades lower than they should be. The inkling of wings.

Perhaps they were beating her because she was a freakish thing, a living bird of a girl.  

Perhaps that is why the ravens in her dreams were clawing at her corset strings, that is why they were trying to sink their talons there. 

Sansa shakes her head. She returns to the present moment. But is there a present moment? Is it the raven or the knight who is cruel? Is it all a dream?  

She watches Bran slide around the pool to get closer to her. If only he would fall in. She would hold him down underwater, gods be damned.

_No, you wouldn’t._

Her brother’s eyes turn to milk.

Sansa shrieks. 

He slips down her vertebrae. Clack, clack, clack. 

She feels a pain in her chest. She lifts a hand to her breasts. She weighs both of them in her palms. She never felt them so fleshy, so material. She  lets them fall with heady torpor. Her hand moves without her accord. She tries to fight it, but his grip is always tenderly oppressive. 

Sansa doesn’t know why her hand is suddenly caressing the inside of her thigh. She thinks of cold nights in Winterfell after Ramsay was done with her, feeling his horrid seed run down her leg and wishing she could wipe it off. He forbade it. He made her play with it. He told her to smear it all over her pretty cunt again and again, back and forth. She dispels the wretched memory. In fact, it is forced out of her head, wiped away like the monster’s seed. Sansa opens her mouth, but there’s only a blank. 

The feeling of her clean fingers underwater is different, new. She is touching herself, but not herself.  It is Bran who guides her movements with the disembodied confidence of the gods. He calmly forces her fingers to slide and slip inside her. 

Sansa realizes all too late the feeling building inside her belly. It is slowly boiling her, like the miserable songbird in Winterfell’s pools. 

“N-no. Please _don’t_.” 

She flails limblessly without wings. She desires desperately to fly, but she can’t remove her hand from her cunt. She grows more and more flush and desperate. Her fingers go faster, yet somehow not fast enough. She digs her heels into the bottom of the pool. Her breasts peek out of the water.

“Mm, please - please - Bran - _stop_ \- Bran - stop,” she chants, biting into her cheek. 

“Your thoughts are still too loud,” he speaks through the steam, hands clasped before him, calm and satisfied. 

Sansa arches her back against the marble edge. “Oh gods please don’t do this, please - just - just let me go -”

The pressure builds like a well-stoked fire.

Bran shrugs. “If I let you go, you will not learn.”

“Let me go, please - Bran - please -”

The fire is snuffed, all of a sudden. Her hand stills. Every nerve in her body is torn open. Her cunt throbs. Pleasure ripples and retreats. Her sensitive flesh prickles. Everything is suddenly contained. She feels tears running down her cheeks.

“Is this better?” 

There is a sardonic edge to his question. 

Sansa stifles a groan. She shakes her head. She scrapes the bottom of the pool with her toes, looking for friction even in her extremities. She needs release, but she cannot bring herself to ask for such a thing.

She has been brought to such a pitch that she would even fuck one of Ramsay’s dogs. She would let the beasts fuck her.

The horror of it seizes her too late. The Queen in the North is appalled with herself, but at the same time she can’t stop thinking about it. Can’t stop thinking of the direwolf she lost.  

Bran hums. There is a note of gratified surprise in his tone. 

“You always were the wildest of us all, come to think of it. No one could see it. That is why you worked so hard on your manners.” His wheel creaks close to her head. “If you wish to be fucked by an animal, you must enter the body of another animal and mate. Only then will you be satisfied. You still have a lot to learn. But I think you will arrive at your completion.”

Sansa swallows. Oily feathers coat her mouth. Sticky amber. Weirwood roots. She looks up at him in shame, naked and unmoored. 

Bran’s eyes are warm, buttery gold.

“I will make sure of it,” he says, and he sounds like the King of the Seven Kingdoms.

Her fingers become his. They move against her cunt suddenly, fast, very fast, sliding into the red mouth whence all crawl weak into the light. 

The corset of a distant past is ripped open. 

Sansa comes with an inhuman scream. Something screams through her. She feels her walls pulsing around her finger. She rubs her cunt with the heel of her palm. Her mind is washed clean. She is thinking of nothing. An explosion of nothingness. 

Bran watches her chest rise and fall.

“There. That is how you quiet your thoughts. I almost didn’t hear you, just now. It was barely a whisper, fading into nothingness.”

Sansa exhales slowly. 

Her mind cannot latch onto a single thing. 

She is grasping at nothing. Her body tingles with animal knowledge.

"Exactly. That is what you must achieve, finally." 

Sansa presses a hand to her throat. She cannot even feel her pulse. 

Bran rolls away, almost snagging a strand of her hair. “The bath has done you well. I believe you are ready for some fresh air.”

Sansa is so deliriously happy at the notion of going outside she forgets it is her brother, with the unsuspecting support of the Council, who has kept her locked away for days. 

She forgets he is not her brother anymore, not really. 

She sinks into the water with a happy sigh. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> btw, all those not-so-covert pregnancy mentions? yeah...bran has big plans *hides*


End file.
